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Thursday, July 10, 2008

Pinto Athletic Club Decides on New Focus

By Harold Smith
Mountain View Telegraph
      Put on your rally caps. The Pinto Athletic Club is on the comeback trail.
    The PAC Inc., is a formal, nonprofit entity that was formed on Aug. 1, 2003, to act as a focal point for fundraising in support of Moriarty High athletics. But it's been on the ropes the past couple of years.
    The organization's new president, Kathleen Sena, said Friday that the group will try to rebound as it turns down a different path.
    “We hope to help Pinto athletics however we can,” said Sena, the club's sixth president. “Most of the coaches and players did real good with the truck raffle we had (this past spring). Mr. (Joe) Butler, the athletic director, he really took care of that. It helped out a lot. We're excited that we have him (as AD) at least one more year.”
    With the cushion the raffle provided — it raised about $38,000 to augment the athletic budget — the PAC can concentrate its initial efforts this school year on raising school spirit in the community.
    “I would really like to reinvigorate the organization,” said Butler, who will begin his second year as AD this fall. “The old PAC's leadership ended up being two people, the president and the treasurer. The new PAC has new leadership (installed on May 4). It will be slightly different with more of the emphasis on spirit-raising rather than fundraising.”
    Sena, who has been the University of New Mexico registrar for eight years, has some ideas, such as organizing bus rides for fans to attend away games. The PAC currently comprises Sena and her vice president, Colleen Chavez.
    “We're looking at it being an opportunity to bring everybody together,” said Sena, who lives in Edgewood. “They (her PAC predecessors) did good work for a couple of years; people got into it. But Mr. (Ed) Johnson (the school's AD for two years prior to Butler taking the job), he was authoritative in his manner, told people what to do, and they became disinterested.”
    Title IX woes
    The PAC was founded at the request of the school administration and then athletic director Michael Ortiz. The organization — under its first president, John Michael Richardson — was viewed as a proactive effort to comply with Title IX regulations after other schools had been sued for favoring one gender over another in athletic funding.
    Title IX is a 1972 amendment to the federal education law that legislates equal education for men and women and boys and girls, including sports. The PAC, in an attempt to lessen the number of times the businesses were hit up per year, became the sole focal point for all private donations received in support of Pinto athletics.
    The club garnered over $35,000 in funding its first year of existence and somewhat more in other initial years. That money was spread out via a formula based on each sport's participation levels.
    Though monetarily fair, the formula was the rub in the end. Coaches and parents from one sport or the other that had gained more donations than the other sports in the past never got used to not getting their previous level of outside funding, and the administration and some members of the school board didn't like the way the club's rules limited their ability to redirect funds.
    Ronda Zaragoza, the outgoing president, said it took the administration a long time to get back with the club with a report showing where the monies the PAC sent actually went. She said that information was needed so the club could show contributors how the money was spent and to prove that the organization was complying with its bylaws.
    “Now, the new PAC is going to do one or two things starting out,” Zaragoza said. “The PAC has to be revived with new parents. We lost a lot of parental support under the old athletic director (Johnson). The new PAC will need a year or two to rebuild.”
    The club pulled the plug on many of its on-campus fundraising efforts and ceased to act as the focal point in July 2006 when support from the administration waned, Jim Ford, a former PAC president, said at the time.
    Johnson resigned in July 2007. He said in June of that year that he felt he had accomplished the mission as stipulated by Karen Couch, the Moriarty-Edgewood School District's superintendent.
    “She gave me a couple directives when I took over,” Johnson had said, though he wouldn't be specific. “I think we accomplished those things.”
    Under the bridge
    As far as Sena is concerned, all that is water under the bridge.
    “We're going to do some membership drives,” said Sena, whose junior-to-be son, Christopher, is a Pintos golfer. “And number one, we're going to do (an advertising) banner project with the local businesses. We'll put up the banners at all our home games. Then, we're going to have a presence at all our schools' preregistration dates, do Moriarty and Edgewood middle schools. The school will run the concession stand, but we'll reopen the PAC store.”
    Richardson, the PAC's founding president, supports the goals of the re-oriented organization.
    “If the administration, the coaches and the parents can support it, it'll be a great idea,” he said.
    For information on becoming a PAC volunteer or a supporting business, call Butler at 832-5947. Sena said the club's Web site, www.pintoathleticclub.org, is being rebuilt.
   

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